Blog Review #1 - SEO, Monetization etc.

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Blog Review #1 - SEO, Monetization etc.

November 24th, 2007 | 6 comments

Free Blog Review After the great response to my initial offering of 5 Free Site Reviews, I’ve decided to do alot more than 5.

These reviews may or may not be as in-depth as a paid review, but I’ll be sure to provide value to each of the owners.

I’m just going to start from the top (comments) and work my way down. I’m going to try to do one a week, but we’ll see how it all turns out.

The first review is of Zhu’s http://www.correresmidestino.com/

What I like

1. Although the overall design is a little too much for me, it’s unique! I can’t even say that for my own blog, as I’m using a free theme that many others are using.

2. You’re using WordPress and although some smart bloggers don’t like it for security reasons, I love it. Security is definitely something we should be concerned with, but I believe if a hacker is good enough to hack WordPress and they want to hack your blog, they’re going to do it anyway. The loads of useful plugins and themes make it worthy for me.

3. Although you’re not posting daily, you seem to be consistent. I always try to post daily, but there are times when I just can’t do it for one reason or another. As long as you can post once or twice a week, as you are, you’re good to go.

4. You’ve personalized the blog very well. There is no doubt who runs the blog and why.

What you could Improve

There are several SEO aspects that I see, which could drastically improve your positions in the SERPS.

1. Your title is in ~~French~~ Spanish :), but the majority of your content is in English. Use a good keyword research tool to discover a relevant keyword or keyword phrase that would go nicely with your blog and use that (in English) as your title.

2. As I stated, there is some instances of the French language elsewhere on your blog. A little won’t hurt and may even add to the user experience, but don’t get too carried away. That’s a good way to confuse the hell out of the SE’s

3. Use the rel=”nofollow” attribute to block Googlebot and some other SE spiders from assigning PR to pages which do not need PR. This will not only boost the PR of your good content pages, but it will improve your internal link structure.

4. Place your RSS image somewhere that’s more noticeable. I’m not sure if your target audience is one that would use an RSS reader or not anyway, but it doesn’t hurt. Where you have it now isn’t very prominent at all. I’d place it above or below your picture.

5. Replce your sociable plugin with Andy Beard’s Anti-Social plugin. It’s the same exact plugin, but Andy’s inserts the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the social network links so you don’t leak PageRank. Each one of those links are assigned PR and they all appear on every single post on your blog (bad news.)

6. Showing only one post on your index isn’t very user friendly. I’d show at least 2 or 3 posts per page.

7. I can’t imagine that one Google ad at the bottom-right getting any clicks at all, but I may be wrong. I’d do some testing with different formats (colors/sizes) and different positions.

8. I’m honestly not techie enough to know whether or not that drop-down window which contains your blogroll is being crawled by SE’s or not, but if it is you may want to think about reducing the number of links it contains. Like the social links, these links would be getting link juice from every single page on your blog, decreasing the amount that could be going back into your own pages. The same goes for the “most comments” plugin.

I’m sure I could find many more good things and a few more that could be improved, but right now I’m dead-tired

Overall you have an excellent blog! Great job.

Popularity: 11% [?]

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6 comments

Chuck Brown (64 comments.)
24th November, 2007 at 2:50 pm

I think Zhu’s blog is quite beautifully done. A very artistic approach…fitting for such a personal blog.

The only negative thing I noticed: I was unable to read comments on her blog in IE…but they showed up fine in Firefox. Does anyone else have this problem seeing them?
Zhu (3 comments.)
24th November, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Thank you so much for the feedback! This is really useful, cause not only you’re criticizing but you’re also giving advice and solutions. Wow, so much better than the “I love you” / “I hate you”!

Chuck Brown, which version of IE do you have? I can see them fine in both FF and IE… but another commenter said it couldn’t see them as well, so I need to check this out.

The title of the blog is actually Spanish. I want to leave it cause it has a meaning, but I’ll try to find better keywords.

Yes, I do have a few posts in French (mostly immigration related) but I haven’t written in French in over a year… that was when I started the blog. I do write in Chinese from time to time, mostly for fun

Nofollow, RSS and anti-social plugin are all excellent suggestions I’m gonna implement. Thanks a lot ! However, I think I did change the RSS feed while you were reviewing, so it might be better in the menubar.

As for the dropdown archive, I changed it too, because I didn’t think it was too Google-friendly

You’re absolutely right, the ad doesn’t get any click I’ve just started to monetize my blog (well, trying to) and I’m still reluctant to put ads in the post. However, I’m getting used to the idea after over a year of 100% ad-free and I’ll experiment with that this WE.

Thanks again for all the suggestions! I started my blog for fun and because I like writing, but I didn’t do any SEO whatsoever at the time and I’m still no that into it. But as time goes by, I learn and implement smart suggestions like yours… maybe a PR5 next time?
Josh Spaulding
24th November, 2007 at 6:23 pm

@Chuck, It’s definitely artistic and very well done!

I just gave it a shot in IE and it worked fine. I hate IE anyway

I didn’t realize how many comments she’s getting, nice!
Josh Spaulding
24th November, 2007 at 6:32 pm

@Zhu, Great, I’m glad it was useful. I wouldn’t call it criticism, just points to improve on. I think just about anyone could find a few things wrong with any blog, including mine. Those are just thing I saw.

Oh that’s Spanish lol how embarrassing.

If it’s important for the user experience that’s fine. Just understand that it’s not going to do you much good with the SE’s, if you care about the SE’s.

The French shouldn’t “hurt” you as long as the entire post is in French. If you start mixing different languages within each post that could hurt each individual posts chances of ranking though. Then theres the user experience. You know your viewers better than I, but I’d imagine the majority aren’t bilingual?

Theres nothing wrong with an ad-free blog. This blog was for several months and I still haven’t went overboard. But if you can make money with something, might as well. That’s how I see it anyway. Don’t want to leave money on the table

You may want to look into LinkXL. With your blog not being marketing related. Also, Google ads in the posts may very well convert well. Something to think about.

Good luck with everything, you have an excellent blog! Keep up the good work.
Chuck Brown (64 comments.)
24th November, 2007 at 6:49 pm

Zhu,

I’m using version 7.06 of IE. However, I installed the IE Pro extension in the browser earlier this week. Maybe that’s part of the problem, if Josh is seeing the comments OK.

I actually prefer blogs with few-to-no ads. Not that I think ads are evil…but it’s almost impossible not to factor them into your content if you want to make money.

And, as far as I’m concerned, AdSense is currently broken, anyway. I use it (not on my blog), but only because there’s nothing better. It was truly a God-send (or considering your agnostic perspective…ummm, errr, a Goog-send) when it first debuted. But MFA spammers and other abusers have driven the system to the worst-paying, lamest state I’ve ever seen it, and I wouldn’t even bother with it for a personal blog…there’s generally not enough traffic to justify it. Just depends on what your goals are. Certainly couldn’t hurt to have it on there.

I love the artistic feel of your blog. Very refreshing. And I like the fact that your approach is not “typical”. We need less typical and more “real” content like yours (and other things written by people who know what they’re talking about…even if they are just mostly sharing about themselves…rather than regurgitated content).

You might also look into Project Wonderful. For example, if you check out my humor site (http://mademelaugh.com), you can see an ad (placed a couple days ago up at the top right of each page) for Alice in Paris…which is exactly the kind of ad that would look great on a blog like yours, as I think you’ll agree. I have put those ad blocks (they are brand new to my site) up where people can really see them, in order to make them as valuable as possible to potential advertisers. It’s not big money…but if your pay-per-click ads aren’t getting clicks, you might want to try ones that don’t need to be clicked to make you a little bit of money.
Zhu (3 comments.)
25th November, 2007 at 6:10 am

Wow, so many suggestions here! That’s awesome guys, both for the overall positive feedback and for all the great ideas you’re giving me!

I definitely wouldn’t mix several languages in a post. Well, just songs or quotes once in a while but the blog is 90% English. And no, most of my readers aren’t bilingual, but I’m working on it (I’m a French teacher BTW )

But you’re right, I’m a language person (I’m French but speak Spanish, Mandarin and English among a few) and I like mixing up.

To be honest, I started the blog not knowing exactly what I was doing. I mean, I could write and that was pretty much it. I learned a lot about Photoshop, Blogging etc. I’m still new at SEO though and just woke up with a PR4, so I guess it also means that passion is sometimes better than hard SEO work! Not saying that for you guys of course, but I see so many people just copying blogs and getting into the business just to make money… and they’re just copycats.

Anyway, this was a great review and I really appreciate your time. Your feedback is valuable to me!